Bradley Travis

The young British baritone Bradley Travis was born in Cheshire and studied at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) where he was the Drapers’ de Turckheim Scholar, winner of the Alexander Young Award and was a finalist in the Frederic Cox Award. He recently graduated from the Royal College of Music InternationalOpera School (RCMIOS) where he won the Eric Joseph Shilling Award for Opera. He also received a Sir Gordon Palmer Scholarship and was supported by the South Square Trust Award. He is a Samling Artist.

Operatic roles performed include FigaroLe nozze di Figaro, Don Iñigo GomezL’heure espagnole,Lord Ellington La Vie Parisienne, Ottone L’incoronazione di Poppea all for the RCMIOS. Following graduation from the RCMIOS he performed Count RobinsonThe Secret Marriage for British Youth Opera who presented him with the Basil A Turner Award. He sang MinosArianna in Creta, ArgenioImeneo under Laurence Cummings for the London Handel Festival, OfficerTarka the Otter by Stephen McNeff for Buxton Festival Community Project and AlidoroLa Cenerentola for Mananan Festival Opera, and also covered Harašta The Cunning Little Vixen for Garsington Opera.

Bradley Travis has a busy concert diary and his repertoire includes the Requiems of Duruflé, Fauré, Goodall and Mozart, Bach’s St John Passion (Christus & Arias), St Matthew Passion (Christus & Arias), B Minor Mass and Christmas Oratorio, Haydn’s The Creation and Nelson Mass, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Handel’s Messiah. He has appeared on the concert and recital platform at venues including The Sage, Gateshead, St James’ Piccadilly and Cadogan Hall and has recorded Ancel Newton’s song cycle Doomed Youth with Simon Lepper.

He received the Garsington Opera Helen Clarke Award in recognition of his contribution and musical skill during their 2014 season and returned last season to cover the baritone roles in Death in Venice, where he was a recipient of their prestigious Leonard Ingrams FoundationAward. Other recent engagements have included his Opera North début singing Figaro in a performance of The Marriage of Figaro,Lesbus Agrippina for Iford Festival and Fireman Biedermann and the Arsonists for Independent Opera.

Engagements in 2016 included Masetto Don Giovanni and Minister of the SanctuaryIphigénie en Tauride with English Touring Opera, Masetto Don Giovanni for the Classical Opera Company and for Opera Project, Don Fernando Fidelio for Garsington Opera in Paris and Vaughan Williams’s A Serenade to Music in The Royal Albert Hall at the Last Night of the Proms.

Bradley Travis recently performed Bunthorne Patience for English Touring Opera. This Summer he made his début at Garsington Festival as Siegfried Sassoon in the world premiere of Roxanna Panufnik’s new commission Silver Birch.

Engagements in 2018 include Betto di Signa Gianni Schicchi for English Touring Opera and Robin Ruddigore and Strephon Iolanthe for the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company.November 2017

“…The poets Bunthorne and Grosvenor, rivals in monstrous egos as well as in love, are vividly portrayed by Bradley Travis and Ross Ramgobin, with both always staying the right side of ruinously camp…”Mail on Sunday, David Mellor, 19/03/17

“…Steel’s chosen tone is 1970s’ sitcom, with echoes of Kenneth Williams in Bradley Travis’s rubber-faced Bunthorne. This fellow is a very fine performer and delivers his knowing lines (and patter) with relish and clarity…”Opera Now, Robert Thicknesse, April 2017

“…Bradley Travis as Bunthorne created the most marvellous poses, with and without the quill taken from a peacock’s tail feather…his brilliantly affected vacuity served the role to perfection…”markronan.com, Mark Ronan, 09/03/17

“…Travis really worked (Liam) Steel’s physical theatre approach to great effect and showed great comic timing in moments like his confessional monologue ‘Am I alone and unobserved? ….”planethugill.com, Robert Hugill, 10/03/17

“…Bradley Travis’s Bunthorne was an extravagant concoction of cerise and orange velvet, floral stockings lilies and peacock feathers, topped with an extravagant beret. Travis postured, posed and attitudinised with grace, gallantry and gentility, and stayed just the right side of camp droopiness. His ironically drowsy patter number, ‘Am I Alone and Unobserved, I Am’, got the show on the road, characterised by RP diction and effortless singing; and, Bunthorne’s ‘Oh Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!’ was delivered in a honeyed baritone not lacking a splattering of hypocrisy and humbug. The swift ‘If you’re anxious for to shine’ was deftly delivered. Travis has superb theatrical timing and knows when to turn up the comic thermometer: his ham-fisted attempts to fix the raffle to ensure that Patience is his bride almost came deliciously unstuck when Bunthorne wedged his elbow in the urn containing the ticket stubs…”operatoday.com, Claire Seymour, 12/03/17